"Watch along!" the captain roared again. "Gaskets on the mainsail!"
The starboard watch began to wrestle with the heavy canvas which they
had partially freed from its bonds so short a time before. The sail was
made snug, and the Merle dragged back on her "anchor," and though she
plunged and tugged, pitched and rolled, still kept her sharp nose to the
wind. Through the mist of the stinging brine which the wind drove down
the decks in sheets, the captain saw the hands forward pay out some
forty fathoms of scope, and then, man by man, work their way aft.
"I'm awfully sorry I--I made such a mess," Tab shouted in the captain's
ear as he reached him.
"It's all right," returned Jack, aglow with a wild exultation. "It's all
right! No matter."
The ominous belt of opaque mist which they had so shortly before seen on
the horizon was now all about them. The Merle and her crew were
enveloped in a shroud of rushing rain. It drove before the blast in
incredible torrents, and with a force that made them catch their breaths
chokingly whenever they faced it. The seas increased to frightful size.
Even to the sailors, bred on the sea, it seemed hardly possible that
the schooner could live in such surges. The cockpit, although
self-bailing, was kept flooded; in it the water, sloshing about with the
motion of the schooner, was as high as the transoms. The uproar of the
wind, singing on the ropes strung by its own force to tautness, was like
the shrieking of an immense and untuned harp. The crash of the waves
sounded like a continuous cannonade all about the yacht. The mingling of
sea and air produced a vertigo, as if everything was resolving again
into its original chaos. Yet in the midst of it all Jack felt his blood
sing in his veins with pure joy of the battle.
Suddenly the captain remembered the broken skylights. He splashed out of
the cockpit, where he stood almost waist-deep in the jumping water,
steadied himself by the combings, and started forward.
"Pumps!" he shouted. "Come!"
He waved his arm to the men, and the yellow-clad figures detached
themselves in the mist and blurring rain from the points of vantage to
which they had clung, and dumb, obedient, followed him.
The pumps were just abaft the foremast, and were of the semi-rotary
sort. The bars were fitted, and two of the men, swinging themselves
back and forth, back and forth, with a dull and dreary monotony, began
pumping as if they had become parts of a machine. A steady flow of water
came from the waste-pipe in a continuous stream. It spread out over the
deck to port and to starboard as the yacht swayed. It was full of
bubbles and flecks of froth, and was a sickly yellow in hue.
Jack set the rest of the men to stretch new tarpaulins over the gaping
skylights, and then he went below to look at the glass. Drenched,
bruised, cold from his long fight with the storm and the hours which had
gone by without his having had food, he found himself, now that for the
moment action was not imperative, seized with a sort of terror at the
perils he had gone through. The instant reflection that worse might be
yet to come restored his courage. He could face whatever might befall as
long as he might act.
The sight which met him in the once trig cabin was sufficiently
dispiriting. A thin sheet of water swashed softly about over the Turkish
carpet. It chuckled in dark places as if sentient and fully aware of the
impropriety of its being there. A locker door had burst open, and was
banging maddeningly. Farther forward, in the dark staterooms, similar
noises could be heard, with sounds which suggested that all sorts of
small things were being flung about. Everything was sopped with
sea-water and drenched by the beating rain: the transom-cushions, two of
which were skating about the cabin with the wicker deck-chairs; the
books on their shelves; the lockers, the mirrors, the sheathing, down
which large drops ran in dizzying zigzags,--in short, everything. The
sight gave Jack a feeling of discouragement worse than anything on
deck--even the tearing away of the bulwarks--had been able to produce.
He felt as if the cruel old ocean were mouthing the schooner as a beast
breaks the bones of its prey before devouring it. He drew in his breath
with fierce resolution, all his combative spirit aroused to fight to the
last gasp, and made his stumbling way to the barometer. He steadied it
with his hand, and read it. It stood at 27.04. This was a drop of only
.05 since his last observation, and the captain's face cleared a little.
If the glass had practically stopped falling, as apparently it had, the
hardest part of the gale would come soon, and be speedily over. The old
weather saw came into his head,--
Long foretold, long last;
Short notice, soon past.
The relief, slight as it was, affected him so strongly that he almost
smiled. He reflected that the Merle was as well prepared to meet it as
under the circumstances she could be, and he had no real doubt of her
ability to ride it out, unless some unexpected accident disabled the
"sea-anchor."
When he came on deck he was greeted by Tab, who had taken charge in his
absence, and who asked eagerly the state of the glass. Jack told him,
and drawing him into the companionway, where they could escape the wind
enough to talk, he added his reasons for thinking that a short time
might see them through the worst.
"How are things below?" asked the mate.
"Look!" the captain answered, with a sweep of his hand.
Tab bent down and peered into the dismantled cabin.
"The devil!" he cried in dismay.
"Precisely--but it might be worse," returned Jack; "but by George, Tab!"
he burst out with sudden vehemence, "I--I'm glad I haven't got all this
to do over again. You don't know--can't imagine the strain of this sort
of thing."
"Does your conscience get up like a cat with the wind?" laughed Jerry.
"No, Tab," Jack answered soberly, "but the men, you know, and thinking I
took them into this when I'd no right to. Oh, rot! No matter, only I'm
jolly glad I ran off with the Merle before I realized all this. I
couldn't bring myself to do it again for"--
"Come on deck, Jacko," Tab said, after a brief silence in which with
eyes cast down awkwardly he had waited for the captain to continue. "I
know how you feel, but thank the Lord there's work to be done, and we'll
fight through all right. Besides, Gonzague's forward getting a ration of
some sort. We can't afford to miss that."
He put out his hand, and Jack grasped it appreciatively, with a
half-conscious thanksgiving for the comfort of a friend.
"Right you are!" the captain said heartily. "We're both of us ready for
a feed, I fancy."
And out into the storm they went again, buoyant and ready.
[Illustration: Decoration]
Chapter Seventeen
FACING THE MUSIC
"Well," Tab said, "I'll see you as far as the door for fear you'll bolt.
You're a sight nearer funking than I ever saw you, Jacko. You must have
your nerve with you if you don't want to come out of the little end of
the horn."
"I feel small enough to go through it," Jack retorted.
"Oh, that's all right. Just take a brace, and"--
"Humph!" snorted the captain. "It's all well enough for you to snoozle
round and give me advice, but if you had to face Uncle Randolph
yourself, you wouldn't be so chipper, let me tell you!"
The young men were crossing Atlantic Avenue not far from the East Boston
Ferry. They had at last, sea-weary and glad of land, made harbor on the
previous evening. Jack had hardly waited for the anchor to be down
before he had sent off in haste for his European letters, intrusting the
messenger to post a voluminous epistle on which he had written
industriously at intervals all the way over; and for half the night he
had read and reread Katrine's missives, giving Jerry tantalizing bits
now and then, with messages from Mrs. Fairhew enjoining him not again to
aid and abet Jack in any nefarious schemes. In the morning the crew had
been paid off generously, and given passages on the City of Rockland.
Then Gonzague had been left in charge of the yacht, and now, with
feelings curiously mixed, the captain was bound for the office of his
uncle for the inevitable reckoning with the owner of the stolen Merle.
It was a bright, sharp morning, without a cloud in the sky. The air had
a clean crispness which went to the head like wine. The streets were
thronged and noisy. Heavy trucks rolled past the pair like batteries
moving into action; the Elevated thundered overhead with its rumbling
screech. The teamsters shouted profanely at their straining horses; a
fat policeman at the crowded crossing waved his arms like semaphores,
now holding up the traffic and again with commanding gesture sweeping it
along. The shrill voices of the newsboys rang out in mechanical
iteration of the leading sensations of the morning journals.
"Oh," cried Tab, as they walked briskly up State Street, "how good it
is, isn't it, Jacko?"
Jack was too much absorbed in the interview before him to do more than
nod mechanically. He could not at the moment bring himself up to the gay
mood of his friend.
"There's no place like it after all," Jerry ran on, his honest, homely
face aglow with delight. "My word, you may talk about Italy and all the
rest of it till the crack of doom, but they can't hold a candle to good
old Boston! Blest if this isn't the best part of the whole cruise!"
"Think so, do you?" asked Jack dryly. "It's funny, but the very reverse
was in my head. What the deuce," he burst out, "what the deuce am I
going to tell the President anyway?"
"Oh, just give him the yarn off the reel," returned Tab, as if it were
all the simplest thing in the world. "You've got the log with you,
and--I say, do look at those pigeons! Aren't they jolly! Come, brace
up!"
"Oh, yes," said Jack. "Brace up, of course--in the very mouth of the
lion's lair. Here's the building,--we're just about seventy feet under
Uncle Randolph's den. Brace up! The very thing, of course! So glad you
suggested it!"
"Now, Jacko," protested Jerry, "you mustn't take things this way. Do
put some spirit into it. I'll leave you here; but if you want, I'll face
the music with you."
"No, thank you," his friend said gravely; "I'll take the medicine
alone."
"Well, that's what we decided last night when we threshed things out. Go
ahead. Bring the remains round to lunch, though. The Roundheads at one.
It's eleven now, and you've got two hours for the job of placating the
president. Come sure; for I shall be in a stew till I know how you two
get on together."
"All right," Jack responded dispiritedly.
"Good luck," Jerry said, stretching out his hand.
"Thank you," Jack returned, giving Tab a hearty grasp. "So long."
"One o'clock," Jerry repeated; and with a buoyant wave of the hand, he
went on his way up State Street.
"Suppose he'll weep when he sees the Frog Pond," muttered Jack to
himself with a wan smile. "Wish I felt half as chipper."
He went to the elevator, and pressed the electric button. The big cage
came down, the boy clashed the door, and Jack went in as he might have
mounted the steps to a scaffold.
"Mr. Drake's," he said briefly, moistening his lips, and wondering why
they seemed so stiff and dry.
Deposited on the proper floor, he tucked the brown log-book more tightly
under his arm, and approached his uncle's office.
"I must have time," he said to himself. "I haven't thought this business
out for a cent."
He turned on his heel, and walked slowly down the marble-flagged
corridor past the glazed doors of half a dozen offices. Then he stopped
with sudden resolution.
"Damn it! Be a man!" he adjured himself. "This won't do."
He walked resolutely up to the door, and entered his uncle's outer
office. A typewriter was clicking busily at one desk, and various clerks
were scratching away assiduously. Several people were seated about,
evidently waiting to speak with Mr. Drake. Even as Jack entered, the
door opened, and a man came out from the inner room. The head clerk
nodded to Jack, but regarded him curiously.
"How do you do, Mr. Castleport?" he said.
"Can I see my uncle?" Jack asked, returning his salutation, and he added
to himself, "He knows all about the Merle. I can tell by his looks."
"He's pretty busy this morning," the clerk answered, "but I'll tell him
you're here. Of course he'll see you as soon as he can."
Jack took a seat and waited until the next man came out of the inner
office. Then the head clerk went in, and in a moment returned with a
queer look on his face. "Mr. Drake says these men are here by
appointment," he reported, "and he cannot see you till they are gone."
"All right," Jack answered, reflecting ruefully that he was not
accustomed to be thus kept waiting in his uncle's office. "I am in no
hurry."
He settled himself in his chair, feeling that he could have borne
anything better than this delay, and half tempted now to give it up, and
beat a retreat. He saw one man after another go into the inner room, and
after a time return and go away. He crossed and recrossed his legs with
an impatient feeling that he had never sat in so uncomfortable a chair.
He tried to beguile the time by reading the log, but first he opened to
the account of the lifting of the Merle, and then to the story of how
her bulwarks were torn away by the storm. He fell to thinking how good
Uncle Randolph had always been to him, and every minute felt more and
more like a wretch for having left the old gentleman stranded at North
Haven. The time grew longer and longer, and every moment more
intolerable as the second hour began to drag its slow length after the
first. Then he noticed that only one man remained to delay his
interview, and so completely was he demoralized that he felt that he
would have given anything in the world to be excused from the trial
before him. It seemed to him that the last man but one did his business,
whatever it was, in an amazingly short time; and he all but bolted when
the last went to his appointment. If he could get away and think things
over once more, he might perhaps be able to devise some sort of excuse
more plausible than anything he had to offer; and he all but started to
his feet to fly when the door opened to let out the only visitor who had
stood between him and the dreaded encounter with the president.
"Mr. Drake will see you now, sir," said the office boy.
Jack got to his feet as if by automatic action, and felt them drag him
forward against his will. Another instant, and the door had closed
behind him; he stood in the inner office. With a tremendous effort--an
effort which was almost physical--to pull himself together, he looked up
at his uncle.
He saw a slight gentleman, dressed in a well-fitting suit of gray,
looking out of one of the windows with his back to the door. The office
was high enough to command a view of the harbor, shining blue in the sun
beyond the clusters of roofs and chimneys. Mr. Drake stood for a moment
as if examining the view for the first time, while Jack wondered whether
this unconsciousness of his presence was real, or was of a piece with
the infliction of the long wait. Then the President turned to him, and
bowed formally, as if to a stranger. His face wore a curious look of
weariness and patience which somehow reminded Jack of his father. The
high forehead was wrinkled with a line or two that Jack did not
remember, and the curly hair was surely more thickly streaked with gray.
"Well, sir?" Mr. Drake said in a tone hard and even.
"Well, Uncle Randolph," said Jack, confused, "I--I'm here."
"So I see," remarked the President. "Is that what you came to say?"
Jack felt that the interview promised to be even worse than he had
feared. He shuffled his feet uncomfortably, and studied the figures in
the rug. Then he looked up at the face of the elder man, and something
in it smote him to the heart.
"Uncle Randolph," he said suddenly, "I suppose it's pretty late to say
anything of the sort, but--but something that happened on the way over
made me see that--made me see what a blackguard I'd been to steal the
Merle as I did. I don't think apologies are much good, anyway,
especially after you've had all the fun. It's a good deal like trying to
sneak out of consequences, but I--I really mean most sincerely that I'm
beastly sorry."
Mr. Drake did not move a muscle of his keen, well-bred face, but into
his eyes came some faint glint of humor which made Jack stop in
confusion.
"Are you done, sir?" his uncle asked.
"I'm not quite through, sir," Jack said in a sort of desperate humility.
"I--I--that is"--He floundered for a moment, and then went on with a
rush, "I may as well explain that I'm not sorry one way; that is--I
can't honestly say I wish I hadn't taken the Merle, for I--you know I'm
engaged to Miss Marchfield, and I never could have been except--that is,
unless I'd got over there. I can't be sorry for that."
"No?" queried Mr. Drake, raising his brows. "You are not thinking,
perhaps, what is the price I have paid for the privilege of
congratulating you on this engagement. I have no son, and from the day
your father died I have made one of you. You deceive me, humiliate me in
the eyes of my guests, make me the joke of my club, leave me high and
dry at North Haven"--
Sad and sorry as Jack really was, he could not help the impulse that
made him see the chance, and murmur under his breath,--
"I didn't think anything could be high and dry in the sort of fog we
went off in."
His uncle gave a slight cough, as if he were strangling an inclination
to laugh, and then went on in the same even voice as before.
"Of course I can't expect you to have any feeling about the way I felt
about your tricking me, any more than of the anxiety I went through when
the Merle disappeared, and I didn't know whether you were on top of the
sea or under it."
"I--I never thought of that," stammered Jack, feeling his cheeks grow
hot.
"No, I suppose not. Nor how I enjoyed the storm you must have been in on
the way home. Lloyd's people sent me word of your giving them the slip
at Plymouth."
"But they let us," Jack put in eagerly, seizing with avidity at any
point which seemed to afford him a chance to defend himself. "I didn't
think, Uncle Randolph, and I'm afraid I've been a beastly cad to you. I
am sorry to the very bottom of my heart."
The President took a quick stride forward and clapped one hand on his
nephew's shoulder, while with the other he grasped warmly the hand Jack
put out swiftly to meet him.
"There, Jack," he said, "that's all I want. You don't know what we old
fools go through worrying over you young ones. Perhaps it's just as well
you don't."
He gave Jack's hand a vigorous shake, and then turned away to blow his
own nose with equal violence. Jack himself felt hot in the eyes, but he
had no words which seemed adequate to the situation.
"Sit down," his uncle said, waving him to a chair, and then going to his
desk. He took from a pigeon-hole some letters and papers. "I have
several things to say to you. Mrs. Fairhew writes a very spicy letter
when she wants to."
"I should think she might, sir. She can be spicy when she talks."
"She says I didn't know you were grown-up, Jack."
Jack blushed at the remembrance, vivid and sharp, of his declaration to
Jerry that he would make his uncle realize that he had come to man's
estate.
"Oh, ho," said Mr. Drake, regarding him keenly, but with humorous eyes,
"you thought so too, did you? Of course you did! Well, I know it now,
and I've been an old fool. I congratulate you, Jack, with all my heart.
If Miss Marchfield is like her mother"--He broke off as if his thought
had got the better of his speech. "If she is all that Mrs. Fairhew says
she is, you have a treasure, my boy. Don't ever run off with her yacht."
"I never mean to repeat that performance with anybody," Jack declared
stoutly, again shaking hands fervently. "You've always been awfully good
to me, Uncle Randolph, and I've never done anything for you."
"Hum, perhaps not that you know of," the other replied, with a humorous
lift of his eyebrows; "but we sometimes do good when we think we're
doing harm. Read this."
He held out a long blue envelope, much stamped and written upon, and
provided with both American and English postage-stamps. Jack knew it at
a glance as the one he had taken from the messenger that foggy night at
North Haven, had found in the pocket of his coat at Nice, and had after
much cogitation remailed at Plymouth. In the upper left-hand corner was
the notice to return to R. B. Tillington, if not delivered in five
days, and the Boston address written in his own hand. He drew out the
letter and read:--
MY DEAR DRAKE,--You and I have known the ins and outs of the market
for so many years that we ought to appreciate both the danger of
getting into an unsound stock and the foolishness of letting the
real thing go by for the want of a little courage. I think you are
not likely to have forgotten what Orrington said in the club last
week about Orion Copper, or that I told you I meant to sift that
thing to the very bottom. Well, I have been looking it up with a
microscope ever since. I enclose three or four copies of
letters,--this is all confidential, of course; you would know that
without my saying so, but the thing's too important not to be
particular about. I write to you because I've got to have somebody
share the thing, and I think you can raise the money without
putting anybody on the scent. Besides that, we have always got on
well together, I believe in your luck, and I want somebody to stand
with me in running the whole thing. There's nothing less than
millions in it if we can get control at once. Sell anything,--I'm
selling _everything_ myself,--and get in on the ground floor of
Orion. If I had known just where to hit you, I'd have got you to
town to investigate for yourself; but I've wasted a small fortune
already telegraphing to every damned port on the coast I could
think of. You'll find wires waiting at every place you put into.
Orion's bound to be the coming financial constellation. B. B.,
Mellington, Foster, and two or three others have blundered into it
just by bull luck, but they haven't got enough stock to hurt us if
you'll stand by me.
Yours for Orion,
R. B. T.
Jack read in steadily increasing consternation.
"Good heavens!" he said. "Did I make you lose the chance? Did you get
the telegrams?"
"I got them, but they referred me to the letter, and I was too upset
about the Merle to pay much attention. Then I went over to the island,
and stayed there three or four days; so that by the time I did get a
letter--a second one--the whole thing was over."
"Was that what broke Tillington?" Jack asked, feeling as if his escapade
had destroyed half the financial world.
"It saved me from going with him," Mr. Drake returned, with a smile.
"See here." He extended a lot of newspaper cuttings, and then drew them
back. "Never mind, though," he went on. "There's no need of going into
the particulars. The whole thing was a trap from beginning to end. If
you made a fool of me, Jack, by running off with the Merle, it isn't a
circumstance to the fool I'd have made of myself if I'd got that letter.
If it hadn't been for that perfectly heartless and entirely inexcusable
performance of yours, we'd both of us be beggars at this blessed moment.
We came so near it that I can't read that sign downstairs, 'Beggars and
Peddlers not Allowed,' without thinking how near I was to having it
forbid me my own office."
"Do you really mean it, Uncle Randolph?" Jack asked half breathlessly.
"I do mean it, my boy, though I'm afraid the moral of it all's pretty
crooked. I had been led in with a cleverness that gives me cold shivers.
That talk at the club that I'd heard as if by accident had all been
planned out, and so on for a lot more things I won't go into.
Mellington's blown his brains out, and poor old Foster isn't up to
anything but cadging for drinks at the club, and telling how he was
roped in when he was drunk, poor old fellow! I was so sure of Orion that
I'd have put in the last dollar of yours or mine I could have laid
hands on! I feel like a humbug when men congratulate me on knowing
enough to keep out of the mess."
"And I saved you?" cried Jack, bending forward with boyish eagerness.
"Yes, you rascally jackanapes; but small credit to you!"
Jack sent the log up into the air, and, bounding to his feet, caught it
as it fell.
"Whoop!" he shouted. "Oh, how glad I am old Tillington wrote that letter
and I carried it off!"